Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee

Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee

Apparently, there’s only one thing the Marvel Comics chairman emeritus likes to talk about more than himself, and that’s comic books — specifically, the characters he created (Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and so on) during his unparalleled run as editor in chief of Marvel. In his ”bio-autography,” as Lee calls it, Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee, celeb chronicler Mair offers all the hard facts in small, italicized passages, while Lee provides the flavorful meat in his own gregarious manner. The book is a little light on those aforementioned facts — including precisely when Marvel was formed — but like the master storyteller he is, the former Stanley Lieber traces his life from Manhattan tenements to World War II to top of the four-color world with the same punch, wit, and style that made his comics such fun to read.